Valley View's true costs hard to pin down

Sunday

The quest by Orange County lawmakers to gather more information about the cost and management of the county's nursing home has gone through two topsy-turvy weeks.

The quest by Orange County lawmakers to gather more information about the cost and management of the county's nursing home has gone through two topsy-turvy weeks.

A special committee investigating the Valley View Center for Nursing Care and Rehabilitation heard hours of testimony from employees, experts in the nursing home field and others, all adding new perspectives to a two-year debate over whether to sell the 360-bed facility to a private operator.

The committee has clashed with attorneys for County Executive Ed Diana and other desired witnesses who didn't come, which culminated in a 10-9 vote by the full Legislature on Thursday to forgo taking legal action, at least for now, to force Diana and the others to comply with their subpoenas.

Whether some of those wary parties now agree to testify without taking an oath — and perhaps with limitations on the questioning — remains to be seen. In the meantime, what the committee hearings have produced is a sharp disagreement over Valley View's cost to county taxpayers and a litany of smaller discoveries for lawmakers.

A number of zingers have been directed at Orange Administrative Services, the business partnership Diana hired in 2002 to run Valley View. Longtime staff members have criticized the facility's contracted managers as lax and disengaged, feeding the contention by employees and Democratic lawmakers that mismanagement is largely to blame for Valley View's financial struggles.

"We've learned an incredible amount of information," said Roxanne Donnery, the committee's chairwoman, in an interview Thursday. "It's just affirmed my belief that OAS has run Valley View into the ground."

But the committee also interviewed an analyst who pointed to a different cause, even though he agreed that paying Orange Administrative Services $700,000 a year for three employees is excessive. He cited the higher salaries and better benefits Valley View workers get relative to their private sector peers — the very issue Diana and Republican lawmakers have hammered away at.

"You need to bring yourselves in line with your competition," said David Bonk, director of health care services at Toski & Co., an accounting and consulting firm based in Williamsville.

Perhaps the most fundamental issue for lawmakers to resolve before deciding whether to relinquish a county institution is how much it truly costs local taxpayers. Diana, who wants to sell Valley View, puts the figure at $20 million and says it's spiralling upward. But Mike Anagnostakis, a Republican lawmaker on the investigation committee, argued Tuesday that the true cost is $9.5 million and could be lowered by $4 million with better Medicaid billing.

Neither Diana nor Valley View Administrator William Pascocello has appeared at the hearings to counter that argument. In an emailed response to questions from the Times Herald-Record on Thursday, Diana's administration defended its $20 million estimate.

The hearings have brought out a range of grievances.

One staffer testified that residents' laundry complaints soared in 2010 after Diana laid off nearly the entire laundry staff and reverted to an outside contractor. Ann-Marie Fitzpatrick, the only Valley View resident to testify, told lawmakers that service has gotten so bad that she washes clothes by hand in her room.

Employees said they saw little benefit in using CareNext, a company the county hired in 2010 to steer new residents to Valley View from hospitals. The CareNext contract has surfaced before in discussions, both because of its cost and the company's links to Pascocello, who owns 3 percent of it. A Valley View study released last year said the service would cost the county $510,000 over three years, and questioned its value.

Testifying on the first day of the hearings, Richard Kaplan, the company's president and CEO, disputed that cost and said that Pascocello disclosed his stake in CareNext before Diana signed the contract.

The hearings also touched on the role the union representing Valley View workers and other county employees might play in lowering costs. William Oliphant, president of the county's Civil Service Employees Association unit, said the union has offered cost-saving suggestions and is open to negotiating contract terms specific to Valley View. But he rejected the notion of separating its employees from the larger bargaining unit of county workers.

Discussions about selling Valley View were halted in June because of the Legislature's impending investigation, but that 45-day wait has just ended. It's unclear if lawmakers will now resume consideration of the four offers the county received or wait for the investigation committee to release its report by Sept. 6.

cmckenna@th-record.com

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.